


from darkness to light

by ladydetective



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Swan, F/F, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladydetective/pseuds/ladydetective
Summary: Months after Emma's sacrifice, Regina summons the Dark One to her side once more.It goes better than either of them could have planned.Taken from the tumblr prompt: "Is that what you're doing? Trying to make me hate you?"





	from darkness to light

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the response to my last fic, I'd love it if you'd do the same for this one :)  
> You can find me on tumblr @poisoniivys or on twitter @luisasnowlano if you want to leave me more prompts or just to talk.

Emma could feel the darkness swirling inside of her. It was a constant, all-consuming presence, one she was finding harder and harder to resist. Its tendrils curled around her mind like a snake, honing in on every repressed issue, every negative thought, every dark impulse and bringing them to the surface. Every wall she’d ever created to protect herself, the darkness brought crumbling down.

The darkness made her want to hurt, to punish, to kill. It had already made her do bad things – _terrible_ things – and the part of Emma that was still _Emma_ resented that, resented that this all-powerful force was taking yet more choices out of her hands. She wanted to _fight_ , wanted to resist, but she could feel her will to do so fade with every breath that she took.

This overwhelming feeling of frustration, of hopelessness, of despondency, only caused Emma to want to lash out more. It only made her more susceptible to the darkness, more willing to bend to its demands. Emma knew that it would not be long before she lost the willpower to fight the darkness even in the company of her closest family, and she was afraid that she’d hurt them next.

Which was why she was terrified when Regina summoned her mere days later. If someone had told her a few years ago that she was afraid of hurting Regina, she would have laughed in their face – but things had changed, and she was. She was terrified that she’d do something to poison her relationship with the other woman, that she’d hurt her, that she’d kill her – and Emma could not let that happen. Not now, not ever.

So she’d lashed out. She called Regina every name under the sun, brought up every argument they ever had, threw every bad thing Regina had ever done back in her face.

But Regina didn’t even flinch. She didn’t look away or appear ashamed, didn’t back down or fight back. She didn’t look at Emma with any distaste or regret – instead, she only looked compassionate. She stared at Emma with understanding in her eyes, and a kind of empathy on her face that no one in the town could even hope of matching.

She shook her head firmly. ‘I know what you’re doing, Emma, and it’s not going to work. You’re trying to make me hate you, and that’s not going to happen.’ Her voice wavers slightly, as if her heart was breaking. ‘I could never hate you.’

Emma snorted at that – it was a sound so unabashedly Emma Swan that Regina felt hope rise within her chest, before it was swiftly snuffed out again by her following words. ‘That’s a lie,’ snarled Emma, repeating the words that the darkness whispered incessantly to her. She needed to push down the impulse to do worse.

‘No,’ said Regina evenly, as if trying to hold back some great emotion, ‘I never hated you. I was afraid of you – afraid of the time that you spent with Henry, afraid of the damage you were doing to the curse, and afraid that you would eventually break it. The truth, Emma, is that you made me feel more than anyone except Henry had in _years_. That frightened me too – but it wasn’t hate. I have never and could never hate you, Emma.’

As Regina spoke, Emma felt more and more of herself come to the surface than had been there in months. The darkness pushed back against this unexpected loss of control, of course, but Emma _finally_ felt strong enough to push back. There was one lingering insecurity eating away at her, however –

‘But what about now? How could you not hate me after everything I’ve done now? All the – the people I’ve hurt, even killed, how –’

Regina interrupted her, smiling a sad smile. ‘I can’t hate you because I’ve been you, Emma. I know better than anyone the lure that the darkness holds, and I know how hard it is to resist. But you _are_ resisting. I can see it in your eyes, in the way that you hold yourself, in the way that you charged in here in a heroic bid to save me from yourself. Because that’s what it was – heroic. You’re a hero, Emma – not because it was written in some stupid prophecy, but,’ she lays a hand over Emma’s chest, an action she had performed hundreds of times before, but never with this intent, ‘because of your heart. You have the heart of a hero.’

Emma inhales sharply, and feels tears well up, unbidden, in her eyes. That had been exactly what she needed to hear, exactly when she needed to hear it. Everyone else she had talked to since becoming the Dark One – her parents, Henry, her friends – had been sad for her, offered sympathy and support, but they hadn’t _understood_. They hadn’t understood the darkness within her, hadn’t understood the way it whispered to her, hadn’t understood the dangerous impulses it made her feel.

Regina understood, though. Emma realised with a jolt that Regina had always understood her. And lately, Emma had grown to understand Regina better than she ever thought she’d be able to.

She looked at Regina’s hand, still rubbing soothing circles around Emma’s heart. If Emma was in a normal mood, she’d make a joke about Regina just wanting to cop a feel. Instead, she took Regina’s hand in her own and stroked in almost wonderingly. Touching wasn’t ever something that they did, not without some kind of barrier or buffer between them, and Emma thinks she’s finally realised why.

She moves forwards slowly, tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not she should be doing this, and brushed her lips against Regina’s. The darkness within her quailed at the contact, but then fell mercifully silent, as if it had never been there in the first place. There was a _whooshing_ sound, almost like a small explosion, and a burst of light in the colours of a rainbow erupted from within them.

Emma and Regina pulled away from each other slowly, wonder written on both of their faces. Both were dazed, and took a moment to register what had happened.

‘W-what just happened?’ Asked Emma in bewilderment a moment later.

‘I think you know,’ said Regina softly, not the least bit surprised.

Emma noticed the complete lack of astonishment on Regina’s face. She narrowed her eyes slightly, suspicion raised. ‘You knew,’ she said, ‘Since when?’

Regina swallowed, never once breaking eye contact with Emma, ‘For a while, now. True love,’ her voiced wavered with the first insecurity she’d shown since Emma had been summoned – it wasn’t exactly something that had worked out for her in the past, after all, ‘Is the only magic powerful enough to transcend realms and break any curse. We’ve done both, now.’

Emma blinked. ‘The. . . the curse of the Dark One is broken? _We_ broke it? I’m free?’ She uttered the last sentence as a whisper, as if she couldn’t believe it herself.

Regina smiled at Emma, brighter and more sincerely than Emma had ever seen. It lit up her whole face, and made her eyes shine beautifully. ‘Yes, Emma,’ Regina breathed, ‘You’re free.’

Emma laughed, a light, breezy laugh. It was freer and happier than she’d laughed in a long, long time. They did it, she was _free_. She was free from the curse, free from the voice in her head, free from the violence and misery that was associated with being the Dark One.

She threw her arms around Regina, and poured every ounce of the abundant gratefulness she felt into the embrace. She pressed one, two, three kisses onto Regina’s cheek, before taking a moment to think.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said, catching on. ‘Transcend realms? We did that _years_ ago. Have you. . . known since then?’

‘I. . . suspected. I knew, from a professional standpoint, what that kind of ability meant, but I also know that I wasn’t ready to accept it. I may not have hated you, but you were still the daughter of Snow White. You were still the woman who was trying to take my son from me.’

‘When did that change? Asked Emma, intrigued.

‘Gradually, very gradually.’ She shot Emma a glare for old time’s sake. Emma could only laugh. ‘But,’ continued Regina, her voice softening as she made the confession, ‘I think I knew definitively when I sent you over that town line with my memories of Henry. That wasn’t something I would have done for anyone, you know.’

‘Yeah, that I do know.’ She laughed then, trying to infuse some of her usual humour into the situation. She paused, biting her tongue and trying to summon the right words.

‘I think. . .I think I knew for sure when I saw the darkness hurtling towards you. I’d had ideas before then, but I would always put them to one side. Some big bad always managed to distract me from thinking about it. But that night. . . I couldn’t avoid it anymore. Sacrificing my soul wasn’t something I would have done for anyone, either.’

Regina scoffs, torn between amusement and fear – that night had been one of the most terrifying of her life, and she’d led a long one, full of horrors many only experiences in nightmares. When the darkness had been hurtling towards her, she’d been terrified that she’d lose everything that she’d fought for – the respect of the town, her friendship with Snow White, Henry – and Emma. But then Emma had interrupted the darkness, absorbing it into her own body instead.

And Regina had been even more terrified then than she had been for herself.

‘I should hope not,’ she said, at last replying to Emma’s comment. ‘Nothing and no-one is worth your soul, Emma.’

‘You are,’ Emma whispered. ‘I love you, Regina.’

Regina pressed a kiss to Emma’s forehead, and then another to her lips. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not. I love you Emma, more than I will ever be able to say, but I’m not worth that. No one is. No one can be worth giving up your soul, no matter how much you love them. For years, I told myself that every awful thing I did was justified because I was doing it to avenge the man I love. But it wasn’t. It can never be.’

‘Okay,’ said Emma, realising there was more to this than Regina was willing to say, ‘I hear you. No-one is worth surrendering my soul for. But I also don’t regret it, because I love you and you’re here with me now. Who knows where we would be otherwise? You once told Pan that you didn’t regret the things you did because they brought you to Henry. Isn’t this the same?’

‘I. . . suppose it is, in a way. But,’ she said, her voice strict, ‘Don’t do it again. I love you too much to go through that a second time.’

Emma laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I have no immediate plans to. Though. . . in Storybrooke, you never know.’

Regina glared at her, and Emma held her hands up in mock surrender. ‘Okay! Okay. I’m kidding.’

Because she could, Emma leaned in to kiss Regina. It felt amazing to be able to finally do so on a whim after years of secretly dreaming about it, and she never wanted to give this up. They pulled away from one another after several sweet minutes, and Emma smiled impishly at Regina. ‘So, I have the heart of a hero, huh?’

Regina rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever you do,’ she growled, ‘Do not tell your mother I said that. I _do_ have a reputation to maintain.’

Emma laughed. She’d done more than that in the past hour with Regina than she had in the months she’d been under the thrall of the darkness, perhaps longer.

‘I think your reputation as the Evil Queen was pretty much shattered beyond repair the… twentieth? Time you saved the entire town from imminent destruction. Although,’ her voice dropped lower, taking on a teasing cadence, ‘I could be persuaded to keep my mouth shut, if you give me the right motivation, _Madam Mayor_.’


End file.
